Stop making the perilous journey to Libya – Minister

Emmanuel Dogbevi

2 weeks ago

Shirley Ayorkor Botchway

Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, has renewed the call to Ghanaians to resist any temptation to travel to the North African country of Libya, saying, that could be perilous.

She added that it would be ill-advised for anybody to do that – they would be risking their lives.

She confirmed reports of active involvement of some heartless Ghanaians in the criminal sale of their migrant compatriots into slavery in Libya.

Ms. Ayorkor Botchwey told Parliament that those criminals had been trafficking people along unapproved routes and warned them to have a change of heart – end practice or face the full force of the law.

News about the slave trade was first reported by Cable News Network (CNN) in October 2017.

A five-member team was subsequently sent on a fact finding mission to Libya to establish the extent to which Ghanaians were involved in the inhuman trade – whether as victims or perpetrators.

They visited detention camps and interviewed inmates and it came out that Ghanaians had been actively involved.

These people had set up camps along the routes across the desert where they had been exploiting and trafficking, their fellow citizens.

Ms. Botchwey put the Ghanaian population in Libya at between 10,000 and 18,000 and said a sizeable of them were legal residents with some of them having lived there for more than two decades.

She added that those willing to return home were being assisted and said Travel Certificates had been issued to 72 of such migrants, adding that, they would soon be brought home.